Tag Archives: Goethe

Ding Dong! The Bell Went Off!

Deep Thoughts and Musings, Travels, , , , , , , ,

It was amazing to see!  Santo Domingo is the oldest continually inhabited European city in the Americas.  The buildings are over 500 years old in the Colonial Zone.

We had lunch at Pura Tasca overlooking a statue of Frey Nicholas de Ovando, the first governor, and a museum in the Colonial Zone.  We enjoyed tapas, shrimp and rice and, of course, mofongo.  We were right next to where the Rio Ozama and the Caribbean Sea meet.  The Fortaleza Ozama was built there to protect the port and the city.

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It was interesting  to hear the history of how  Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand funded Christopher and Bartholomew Columbus and their explorations in the Americas and about the struggle  to control the Dominican Republic.   The construction of the Fort was begun in 1502 and flew the flags of Spain, England, France, Haiti, Gran Columbia, the U.S. and the D.R. until the 1960’s when it was opened to the public.

There were canons spaced along the sea wall from the Colonial Zone into Santo Domingo.

The history of the Dominican Republic sounds just like the history of the United States and the settlement and canal construction history of Panama.  The explorers and settlers  either ran out out the native inhabitants or enslaved them and brought African slaves as well.  Conquest.

I googled the conquest of central america and had some unexpected links pop up:  the mongol conquest of central asia, the russian conquest of central asia and the arab conquest of central asia, the roman conquest of britain, etc.  And so it looks like the common one word descriptor of world history is “Conquest”.  It seems every country on every continent has experienced conquest.  Every one of them has had citizens killed and enslaved.  It’s a pattern.  We seem to live life in cycles and patterns.

Ding Dong.  The bell went off!   Last year we went to see Dinesh d’Souza’s movie “America”. He had gone into great detail about this very subject.  This is just the first time I’ve personally bumped up against it.  It’s interesting to me how I can learn lots of disconnected information and (pow) something brings my mind to connect it and other thoughts are drawn to expand…..that’s it, expansion!

Again:  Goethe said “You only see what you’re looking for and you only look for what you know.”

You Only Look For What You Know

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One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Johann Wolfgang Goethe.  “You only see what you’re looking for.  And you only look for what you know.”

It never fails.  When I think of these words…..they stop me cold.  How can I look for what I don’t recognize, what I’m not familiar with, what I don’t even know exists?  How can I see beyond what I know, what I understand?

I have an example, superficial as it is.  I love bright, fuschia bougainvillea.  I’ve been dazzled by large clumps of them climbing on lattice work and balconies in Mexico and Southern California for years.  I just took a very close up picture of some and to my surprise the most exquisite little white stars appeared.  I wasn’t looking for them, I really didn’t know they were there.  But, I looked closely and saw something more than I had ever seen before.  It was a revelation.

If you prefer to see just the beautiful, the easy to understand, the easy to deal with…..then don’t look too closely.  Stand back a ways where it’s familiar and safe.

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But, if you’re curious and actually looking for some new, exciting knowledge,  look closely. You might see some ugly, black parasites.  But…..you might see some beautiful, exquisite white stars.

Magic Is Believing In Yourself

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is quoted as saying ”  Magic is believing in yourself.  If you can do that, you can make anything happen.”

Through the years, I’ve read lots of wonderful, uplifting quotes about belief.  Some had to do with religion, others alchemy and even science.  I’ve read them and pondered the basis of my beliefs.  Most of them have been handed down through my english, swedish and irish ancestors.

My Mom and Dad very carefully taught me what they had been taught.  And I believed.  I believed not only them but also my teachers in school and church.  For that matter, I believed what every authority figure in my life had to say.

I do have to admit that many of these people are great in my eyes.  My english teacher in high school inspired my love of words and books.  My seminary teacher, a couple of college professors and several art teachers achieved a measure of success  in their own lives and inspired my love of learning.  However, as I’ve grown older and become aware of them as human beings with frailties, I realize that all they could give me was their own best guess.

I accepted the values of others verbatim.  What does that say about my intuition and judgement?  It would have made more sense to accept them as input, accumulate them, weigh them against what I saw in my life around me and come to my own conclusions.  Because, as I look back, there was a lot of “do as I say, not as I do” going on.

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I love the quote from Napoleon Hill:  “Do your own thinking on all occasions.  The fact that the human beings are given complete control over nothing save the power to think their own thoughts is laden with significance.”

This sculpture, The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin is a image of a man thinking…..lost in thought.  His muscular body suggests a great capacity for action. It was commissioned to be part of an intricate monument:  The Gates of Hell.  I like to think he was contemplating his beliefs:  which values are worth living for and then what was he going to do about it.

For years I made resolutions in the spirit of  ringing in  the New Year.  Some I kept longer than others, but for the most part, they were quickly forgotten.

I asked my husband if he planned to make any this year.  Not surprisingly, he said no.  But then he added that he makes resolutions almost every day and that as he reaches goals or milestones toward goals, they invariably spawn new ones.  It’s an ongoing process for him that has evolved over the years.  He is a thinker and a doer.

So, I’ve come up with this:  I resolve to learn more, to think more and to do more in 2015!   Let’s make MAGIC!  Let’s learn to BELIEVE IN OURSELVES!